


find him in the curves of certain lines

by talkingtothesky



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode: s04e20 Terra Incognita, Fluff, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 09:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: John’s head comes to rest against Harold’s chest, and Harold blows his own warm breaths into John’s hair, praying, praying.[A snippet collection of Rinch cuddles]





	1. For warmth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MnemonicMadness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MnemonicMadness/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Mnemonic! You deserve something more coherent than this, but I've been super busy with Big Bang stuff. So here, have some tiny cuddling-themed ficlets I just whipped up, prompts randomly selected from this list: 
> 
> http://talking2thesky.tumblr.com/post/179410729678/cuddling-prompts

Mr. Reese's thumb has been stroking the back of Harold's chair for five minutes now. He's treating this inanimate object like a skittish pet which needs constant soothing. He keeps glancing at Harold guiltily.

Harold sees all this reflected in the glass board. 

"What _are_ you doing?" he asks John, when his confused irritation reaches its limit.

John looks at his hand as though it doesn't belong to him, then swallows. "It's...still warm. From when you were sitting here."

John's honesty startles Harold. His exasperated frown deepens. He walks back around the table and presses the back of his own hand to the chair. "I don't feel anything."

Reese tries to shrug, both hands retreating into his pockets. "Must've imagined it."

"There are more effective ways to warm cold hands, Mr. Reese. The budget might even stretch to a pair of gloves." 

"I'm...fine," he demurs, smiling at Harold's sarcasm.

"You're hopeless," Harold corrects him, and starts undoing the buttons on his vest. "Here," he says, drawing John's hands out of his trouser pockets and placing them against his sides, outside his shirt but under vest and jacket. "I'll appreciate your affection far more than my _chair_ can."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired, of course, by this gifset: https://mnemonicmadness.tumblr.com/post/179268921708/i-never-noticed-this-before-but-look-at-john


	2. In the back seat of the car

Lionel helps him transfer John to his car, leaving the one with the shattered window behind. Harold climbs into the back seat with him, heaters blasting air at them. He takes off his scarf and folds it into a large pad to press against John’s wound, who doesn't even wince. He keeps drifting in and out of lucidity. His head bobs with the bumps in the snowy road as Lionel drives them away from Chase’s cabin. Apart from that, he’s limp and hunched over.

It’s painful to see him in such a bad way, with drying tear tracks on his cheeks, glinting whenever they pass a source of light. Harold reaches out to blot one with his glove, and once he feels the iciness of John’s skin, nothing could prevent him from shifting over on the seat to hold him close, rubbing his arm and shoulders, tucking their legs together. John’s head comes to rest against Harold’s chest, and Harold blows his own warm breaths into John’s hair, praying, praying.

After a while, John rouses enough to speak, finally becoming aware of his surroundings. “Finch, you’re here.” He sounds surprised, as though he hasn't heard it often enough: _always, always._

“Sorry about the…atlas of Patagonia.” He croaks, nonsensically, rather than the apology Harold wants to hear, which is: _sorry I refused to_ _tell you where I was going._

John doesn't care to explain, just sighs and wedges one hand under Harold’s thigh, his head butting up under Harold’s chin.

“You see Carter?” He adds, tentatively.

Harold is stunned. “…No, I didn't.”

“What does he mean?” Lionel asks, from the front.

“I've no idea.” He very softly kisses the back of John’s head. “Please get us home.”


	3. With snow outside

Reese is standing by the windows with his face upturned, watching the pretty flakes drift. There’s the tiniest peaceful curve to the corner of his mouth, not quite smiling, yet.

“It’s ready!” Harold calls, from the kitchen. He sounds slightly stressed. John blinks and hurries back to join him. He’s carrying a hot tray of roast potatoes and veg, struggling not to drop them, with his hastily-grabbed oven mitt and unsteady gait.

John dashes forward, snagging a dishcloth. “Here, let me take that.” Harold isn't supposed to be in charge of cooking anything, just tasting, but John got distracted by playing with Bear and glimpsing falling snow and didn't hear the timer.

The tray safely on the counter, Harold blows on his fingertips. John cups the back of his wrist and turns his hand over to inspect the damage. Slightly red, they’ll sting for maybe half an hour, then go back to normal. He kisses them better, while Harold berates himself for his clumsiness.

John shakes his head, won’t hear a bad word against him, not even from Harold himself. John tugs him by the arm, into an embrace. Harold’s lips find his, sweet with wine and ginger cookies, and John’s massive empty loft has never felt warmer.

That smile breaks free as their foreheads touch.

”Happy Thanksgiving, Harold.”


	4. Just waking up

The seats in the subway car are definitely not the best place for naps. But Root and Shaw and Bear got to the camp bed first, and it’s currently too dangerous to venture above ground.

Harold is not exactly comfortable, but John makes a very sturdy pillow. He’s somehow managing to doze, even with Harold’s full weight on top of him, his feet touching the floor where the bench stops behind his knees. His frame is tall enough for Harold to curl up in an almost fetal position, his cheek on John’s chest, his legs across John’s lap. John’s fingers are laced over Harold’s left hip, holding him on.

Harold drifts very slightly up and down with the steady movement of John’s ribcage. If Harold shifts even an inch, he’s afraid he’ll wake John and they’ll both overbalance, tumbling to the floor in an ungainly heap.

So he lies very still, and thinks about how right this feels, to be touching all along the length of their bodies.


	5. In the dark

“John? John!” Harold pushes himself off what he hopes is the floor.

The last thing he remembers is John falling through rotting wooden boards, and being unable to reach him.

It’s pitch black all around. He doesn't think it’s a problem with his eyes. He can feel the frames of his glasses miraculously still perched on his nose, and when he blinks and strains hard to perceive any kind of shape, the light level doesn't change.

He crawls forward on hands and knees, cautiously trying to feel his way along, afraid of sudden lurching unseen gaps into nothingness.

His next hand placement is on something soft and warm. That something seizes his wrist. He cries out and starts to wrench himself away. Then a groan and the grip loosens. “Harold?”

“John!” He reaches out with both hands, blindly grabs what feels like an elbow, up to a shoulder, then the blessedly familiar curve of a jaw, an ear, and John is reaching for him too, sliding both arms around his waist.

John’s back is against a wall, Harold can feel it now, rough and worryingly damp.

It’s a relief not to be alone here, but it also means that they’re both stuck, and can’t rescue each other.

“Are you okay?” John’s asking, placing tender kisses on his cheek and chin.

“I'm in surprisingly little pain.” Harold reassures him. “But you…you must be…” He hardly dares to reach for John’s legs.

John’s body shifts. There’s an odd metallic clink. “I don’t think my legs are broken,” he reports, “but my ankles are cuffed to the floor.”

Harold swears, and feels his way down to John’s shoes. He finds the metal bands a moment later, about three inches wide. He reaches around their circumference for a chain, and discovers two. John’s feet are separately bolted into the concrete.

“…If you’re free to move,” John says gravely, “you need to go. Now.”

The thought of venturing back into the dark alone is unbearable. “Go _where_? I can’t see anything.”

“Just get out of here, Harold. Whatever this is, it’s not good.”

Harold shuffles back and sits against the wall beside him, linking their arms. “I am _not_ leaving you. End of discussion.”


	6. In public

John’s leading his partner through the crowded city streets and they’re in a hurry. He’s sympathetic to Harold’s halting pace but they can’t go slow now, not when lives are at stake. But it’s also not an option to lose him. Linking their arms together works fine for a while but then someone knocks into Harold’s shoulder, not bothering to step aside, and John’s patience nearly snaps.

After Reese draws to his full height and stares him down, the rude man slinks off. The soothing weight of Harold’s palm on John’s back calms him the rest of the way.

“Here,” Harold says, locking his fingers and thumb in together and hooking them into John’s hand. It’s not the typical interlacing of fingers that couples do. It’s a firm, unbreakable bond. “I promise I’ll hold on tight.”


	7. On the couch

“Cuddle me,” John begs, his fingernails digging into the back of Harold’s shirt collar like he wants to scrabble his way inside him.

“Hmmm, that sounds delightful,” Harold agrees, letting himself sway in John’s hold for another minute, his face warm from being propositioned outright.

Then he moves over to the couch, sitting down at one end and placing a cushion in his lap, plumping it into shape. “Here, will this do?”

John lies down eagerly on his back, head and shoulders on the cushion and his hand plucking at the knot of Harold’s tie. Harold lets him play with it and likewise untucks John’s shirt, unbuckling his belt. Not as a precursor to sex, but to make him more comfortable. John’s shoes clatter to the floor as Harold rolls up John’s sleeves, the better to stroke his thumbs over his strong forearms, outline his muscles, admire the graceful bones in his long fingers.

Fifteen minutes of this sort of thing and John is squirming in his lap, the simple pleasure of touch overwhelming to both of them. “ _God_ , Harold.”

They don’t kiss, though Harold would if John asked. Instead, he flexes his toes in his socks and says: “Read to me.”

Harold plucks a book at random off the side table and opens it to the first chapter, content to have a splendid evening ahead of him.

_“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac…”_

Harold balances the book in the crook of his left elbow, turning the pages with the fingers of his left hand, leaving his right hand free to curve around John’s knee, dig his thumb into the back of it, wander down his thighs and up again, shoulders and stomach and throat.

**Author's Note:**

> Harold reads from Oscar Wilde's [The Picture of Dorian Gray](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm), which is also the source of the work title.


End file.
